For the first time in human spaceflight history, NASA has contracted with a commercial company for a human spaceflight mission. A recent task order to Boeing’s Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract includes the company’s first-ever service flight to the International Space Station.

The Commercial Crew program announcement is another step toward restoring America’s ability to launch crew missions to the International Space Station from the United States in 2017. It also builds on Boeing’s nearly 100 years of aerospace and more than 50 years of space flight history.

The Commercial Crew Transportation System is being developed in partnership with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program which aims to resume U.S.-based flights to space by 2017. In September 2014, NASA selected Boeing to build and fly the United States’ next passenger spacecraft, the Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 . The company has successfully demonstrated to NASA that the Commercial Crew Transportation System has reached design maturity appropriate to proceed to assembly, integration and test activities.

The CST-100 can transport up to seven passengers or a mix of crew and cargo to low-Earth orbit destinations like the International Space Station (ISS) and the planned Bigelow station.